Down Under (19 page)

“No,” said Oliver, “I didn't know that.”

Amos Rennard looked at him sharply.

“It was all Ralston's fault. I always told him he'd got that dynamo too near the shaft, and he said there wasn't anyone to hear it, and he'd got it where he wanted it and he wasn't going to put it anywhere else. You can take a bit of notice about Ralston, young man. Obstinate—that's what he was—a good engineer, but pigheaded. Well, he had to go.”

Oliver said, “Where did he go?” because there was a pause and it was the easiest thing to say.

“I wouldn't like to say. We had his funeral a week ago. He'd got above himself, and it don't matter how clever they are, if they get above themselves they've got to go. We'll be put to all the trouble and expense of getting another. That's the worst of your clever ones, they don't care a dash what trouble they put you to, or how much you're out of pocket over them.” His red bristles drew together in a frown. “We've got to have someone good,” he said. “Philip'll have to look into it. Well now, you haven't told me how you got here, and that's a thing I'd like to know.”

Oliver told him quite baldly. It didn't seem to matter what he said or did. Whether he pleased the Old Fox or put him in a rage, the end would be the same. He could think of no way in which he could become indispensable, and only the indispensable had any future here.

His head was getting worse all the time. Once or twice he did not know whether he had spoken or not. The mist got thicker. Amos Rennard's voice came booming through it.

“Hold up, young man—what's the matter?”

Oliver put a hand to his head and touched it gingerly. It didn't seem to belong to him at all. He said in a slow, careful voice,

“I don't know. Can I have something to drink?”

A rift in the mist showed him a red, reproving face.

“Not if you mean alcohol, you can't, young man. Now a good cup of cocoa, or tea—I've no objection to tea.”

Oliver heard himself asking for tea, heard the hall echo with a stentorian order, and for a moment or two heard no more, because the mist seemed to have got into his ears. When it cleared, he was being treated to a lecture on the advantages of total abstinence.

“How do you suppose we'd manage down here if we'd liquor knocking about? Keep 'em sober, keep 'em safe—that's been my motto all along. And how are you going to keep 'em sober if there's liquor knocking about where they can get at it? No, no, no, young man, we're all blue-ribbon down here, and that ought to be a great consolation to the Reverend Luke. When he gets low in his mind I put him up to preach a real good rousing temperance sermon—none of your namby-pamby pulpit essays, but real good meaty stuff with plenty of hell fire about it. It don't hurt us, and it does him a power of good. That's the type of sermon you want, something that makes you feel good. You haven't met the Reverend Luke yet, have you? He's not a bad fellow, and he's a pretty good preacher. Of course there's a sameness about sitting under the one minister Sunday in, Sunday out, but I don't see my way to getting round it. It'd make a bit too much talk if too many of our ministers went missing, so we just have to put up with the Reverend Luke.”

Someone brought tea in a china pot with a gay pattern of roses on it. The cup was a satisfactorily large one. Oliver drank thirstily.

The conversation had become a monologue. He listened with imperfect attention to Amos Rennard's views on such diverse subjects as education, religion, horse-racing, and the culture of mushrooms, Amos thought children were brought up all wrongly. If he had his time again, he'd bring his up differently, but Oliver did not discover wherein the difference was to lie. Religion he liked strong, with plenty of pulpit thumping, and flaming penalties for all the sins to which he himself was not inclined. Horse-racing was the parent of betting, and betting was the curse of the country. “Believe it or not, young man, I've never had a bet on anything in my life.” What the Americans call “Playing the markets,” did not apparently come under this heading. Mushroom culture was an interminable topic. Oliver leaned his head on his hand and stopped listening.

At long last the audience was ended.

He walked beside Ernie through lighted passages which rocked beneath his feet till they came to a room with a bed in it. Oliver sat down on the edge of the bed and looked stupidly at his feet. He ought to take his shoes off, but he seemed to have forgotten how. He stared at the laces until Ernie's big hands interrupted his view. His shoes were taken off, his coat and trousers were taken off, he was pushed down upon the pillow and covered. The light went out with a click. He went to sleep.

CHAPTER XXII

Oliver woke with a feeling that a long time had passed. He had, in fact, slept for twelve hours almost without moving. Fanny stood by his bed hoping he felt better, and asking him whether he preferred kipper or eggs and bacon for his breakfast—“And it's gone ten o'clock, Captain Loddon.” He might have been in his old room at the Angel. He chose eggs and bacon, and tea instead of coffee. His headache had gone, and he was hungry.

The bacon was deliciously crisp, and there were fresh rolls. When he remarked on them, Fanny told him they were Philip's fancy—“Austrian, the baker is—come over from Vienna before they tightened things up so that you couldn't, and had a little shop in Soho, and Philip he took such a fancy to the bread he had him brought along.”

“Look here, Fanny, don't any of these people cut up rough?”

She nodded.

“Mostly—at first. They drug them for a bit, and then they settle down.”

“Suppose they don't?”

Fanny looked scared.

“If they've a grain of sense they do.”

“And if they haven't?”

“They go on the scrap-heap,” said Fanny in a small, hard voice.

“I seem to remember your uncle telling me that.”

“Then you'd best take it to heart, Captain Loddon.”

Oliver stopped half way through his first cup of tea.

“And when do they begin to drug me? There isn't anything in this, I suppose? Or is there?”

Fanny's colour flamed.

“No, there isn't! And I'll thank you not to think things like that about me! I don't drug people!”

He begged her pardon, and she went away, he thought in a huff.

Presently she came back with her baby in her arms. There was no doubt about his being a true Rennard. The little frowning face with the downy red eyebrows and the thatch of orange-coloured fluff bore a most comical resemblance to the old Red Fox.

Fanny sat down with the baby in her lap and chattered away about him—his strength, his weight, his appetite, and his likeness to Ernie. All of which Oliver endured politely.

“Only I don't want him to grow up here. I can't help thinking about that, you know. It don't seem right to say that a child's never to see the sun, and moon, and rain, and trees, and all the other things that we was brought up with.” She hugged the baby up under her chin and looked at Oliver over the top of his head. “What Ernie and me would like would be a little garridge. There's one going that would do us a treat in Ledlington. Ernie did his training there, you know, in the Ledlington Motor Works, and he says it'd be a real nice place to live, and real nice people there, and you can get out into the country as easy as easy, and that's what I'd like. I wasn't brought up in a town, you know, and I like being near the shops and a cinema, but I don't want to be where I can't get the sight of a field if I want to. That's what I hate about being down under—nothing but a lot of dark passages and electric lights. But I don't expect they'll ever let us go—I don't expect they'll ever let any of us go. Come to think of it, how can they? We all know too much. It'd be safer for us if we didn't.” Her lips trembled. Then she jumped up. “Stupid—that's what I am. There's lots worse off than what we are. I don't know what made me get talking like this to you.”

“Fanny,” said Oliver, “how can I see Rose Anne?”

She had been moving towards the door, but she turned now, startled, with the baby in her arms. She said, “You can't,” and backed against the door and stood there as if she would bar the way.

“Fanny, I've got to see her.”

She threw up her head.

“And I tell you you can't, Captain Loddon.”

“Fanny—”

“What's the use anyway?”

“I've got to know—”

She finished the sentence for him,

“Whether she's shamming or not? That's what you mean, isn't it? Now you just listen to me. Suppose you see her, and she's like she was yesterday—that won't do you any good, will it?”

“But—”

She interrupted vehemently.

“But suppose she isn't like that—suppose she's her own true self. Suppose she's been putting this on to keep Philip off, and you break her down—and I don't see how she could help but break down if you were alone with her, and you begging and beseeching and being loving to her like you would be—well, what would happen? You'd be playing into Philip's hands, neither more nor less. Do you think anything goes on here that he doesn't know? Do you think you could see Miss Rose Anne without his knowing? Why, the whole place is wired, and fixed up with microphones so they can listen in anywhere, and you never know who's hearing what you say. Why, I wouldn't dare be talking to you like I am now if it weren't that Ernie won't stand it, and he's told them so, and he knows enough to find out if there's anything fixed, and to cut it out. Why, he told them straight, Ernie did, when he brought me here—he told them bang out if we couldn't have a place where we could be private and say what we liked without every chance word being taken notice of and picked over—well, he said, 'Tisn't worth it, and 'tisn't what I call life anyway, so if that's the way it's going to be, you can put us away and have done with it, because we'd rather. Ernie's right down easy-going, but rouse him and he don't care what he says or who he says it to—and of course he knew well enough they couldn't do without him. So after that they left our rooms alone, but he keeps a bright look, Ernie does, just in case.” Her colour flamed and her blue eyes shone.

Oliver said, frowning,

“You're sure—about this listening in?”

“Of course I'm sure. How do you suppose they could run this place if they didn't know what was going on? I tell you a mouse can't squeak down here without its getting to Uncle, and if it isn't the kind of squeak he likes, well, it's so much the worse for the mouse.”

“Fanny—isn't there any way I can see her? Fanny, I've
got
to see her.”

“Oh, you'll see her all right,” said Fanny. “There's a do tonight in the big hall. Uncle's sent word for you to go. Dinner first and a show afterwards. Everyone's to be there, so you'll see her then—and for mercy's sake look out, because Philip's going to watch like a cat at a mouse-hole. He isn't one that misses much, Philip doesn't.” She went out of the room on that, and left him with plenty to think about.

He dressed, tried the door, and found that it opened on to the room with the green curtains. After some groping he discovered the door which led to the gallery. Ernie loomed up as he opened it, with a suit-case in his hand.

“Feeling better this morning?”

Oliver said, “Oh, yes—quite all right.” His eyes were on the suit-case. It was one he had left in the car, and that meant … He said bluntly, “That's mine.”

Ernie grinned, and then looked embarrassed.

“I thought you'd be wanting your things. I brought them along for you. You'll find everything all right.”

Well, they were thorough. He gave them marks for that. Any hopes he had built on his car being traced to Oakham Place died a natural death. He said,

“Very thoughtful. Did you bring the car along too?”

Ernie grinned again, less sheepishly this time.

“What do you think? She's a nice little bus. I did the best part of a hundred miles in her last night.”

Well, that was that. Oliver changed the subject.

“Is there any objection to my going out?”

“Well, you might lose yourself.”

Oliver laughed.

“Does that matter?”

“You might starve.”

“Are there a lot of passages?”

“A good few. You're all right if you don't get away from the lights. There's a lot of old mine-workings outside of what we've got wired, and if you got off into them you'd lose your way and be lucky if you ever found it again. If you'll shut that door, I'll give you a word of warning.”

Oliver shut the door.

“I'm sorry for you,” said Ernie with simple directness—“and so is Fanny. We're both sorry for you, but there it stops. We can't do a thing for you, and it's best for you to know that and bear it in mind. That's one thing I want to say, and here's another. Don't you go thinking you can get away out of here or get Miss Rose Anne away, because you can't. There's just the two ways out, one that Fanny's told you about that comes out at the Angel—and she'd better have held her tongue—and the other you know already, because it's the way you came in through Oakham Place, and there isn't any man alive can get out either way except he's got the word from Uncle.”

Oliver repeated this, “The word?”

Ernie nodded.

“There's a steel door that fills the passage either end, same like the door of a safe, made special to Uncle's order by Grimshaws, the big safemakers. They shut with one of those letter locks—well, you can set it to letters or figures whichever you like. It's a seven letter combination, so the chances against your hitting on the right word are a million to one or thereabouts. I used to have the word for the door to the Angel, but they've changed it since—after it came out I'd been courting Fanny—and now they don't give me the word at all. It's Mark or Philip that opens the door for me, and when I come back I have to ring through so that one of them can come along and let me in. I suppose you thought you'd got into this place when you followed Fanny and me through the hole in the wall, but if you'd gone a dozen steps farther you'd have found the steel door in front of you, and you couldn't have got through that, not without half a ton of dynamite.”